Five persons, held guilty earlier for the sensational murder of gangster Sushil Srivastava, were on Tuesday sentenced to life imprisonment and multiple fines with the district court premises, where the sensational daylight shooting took place in June 2015, cordoned off like a fortress since morning.

In all, 42 witnesses recorded their statements after which the court of additional district and session judge-VI Amit Shekhar had pronounced the five guilty on September 11. They are mastermind Vikas Tiwary, Dileep Sahu, Vishal Kumar Singh, Rahul Dev Pandey and Santosh Dev Pandey.

Additional public prosecutor Bharat Ram said all five were awarded life imprisonment, but two of the convicts, Vikas Tiwary and Santosh

Pandey, would have to remain in jail till death.

Tiwary is presently lodged in Palamau jail while Santosh and Rahul are in Loknayak Jai Prakash Narayan Central jail. The two others, namely, Dileep and Vishal, were taken into custody on September 11 after they were pronounced guilty.

Shambhu Nath Tiwary who is the father of Vikas Tiwary was given the benefit of doubt and acquitted. One accused, Deepak Sahu, is still at large.

The entire court premises was sealed with policemen deployed at the two gates in large numbers since the morning on Tuesday. No one other than lawyers were allowed entry with SP Karthik S personally supervising security arrangements.

The shooting took place on June 2, 2015 at 10.40am on the civil court premises. Srivastava (53) came out of the court building after being produced before a judge in connection with a murder case in Ramgarh.

Two of his aides - Gyas Khan and Kamal Khan - who were out on bail in the same case reached out to greet him when amid a cloud of smoke there was firing. Srivastava’s aides took three bullets each and instantly fell to the ground dead. Srivastava instinctively flattened himself on the ground, but two gunmen came out of hiding from behind an SUV on the court premises and pumped eight bullets into his body from point-blank range.

Police investigation confirmed the involvement of one Vikas Tiwary as the mastermind who was also leader of the notorious Bhola Pandey Gang. The murder was planned to avenge the death of former gang chief Kishore Pandey in Jamshedpur.

Soon after the incident, police sealed the borders of the district to catch the mastermind Vikas. But he managed to escape from Hazaribagh.